Joe

  “You better get them greasy goddamn fingers off my truck, boy,” Joe said.

  He acted as if he didn’t even hear that, just kept holding onto the mirror and looking at John.

  “All I want’s five dollars worth of gas, Mr. Coleman. My wife told me she’d get paid next week, I promise you.”

  John Coleman leaned back in the seat and twisted off the top and turned the bottle of beer straight up in the middle of London Hill and took a good hit. He opened a bottle of the whiskey on the seat and did it the same way, then wiped his mouth. He didn’t look at the man outside the truck when he spoke.

  “You done promised me about twenty times. You ain’t paid me nothing in three months and you just wasting your breath. Let’s go, Joe.”

  The greasy hands went to the inside of the door as if to hold them from leaving, and Joe opened his door and walked around the back and right up to him.

  “You get them hands off my truck.”

  The guy turned to him, looked him up and down.

  “Fuck you,” he said. “Who in the fuck are you?”

  Joe didn’t hit him but one time. The pickup wheels spun sand and gravel on him where he lay in front of the pumps.

  They rode and drank. Joe sucked a cut knuckle and wished for his dog to lick it. John Coleman agreed that it would help.

  “That boy,” he said. “I’ve done him ever favor I could. Some folks you can’t do nothing with. Just sorry. God knows I’ve done plenty of drinking and stuff in my time, but I be damn if I ever tried to cheat anybody out of any money.”

  It was late afternoon by then and they had the windows rolled down, the music turned down so they could talk. It surprised Joe that John Coleman would hear a song he recognized and, once in a while, turn the radio up, then turn it back down when the song was over. There were horses in pastures and hawks with their wings folded sitting high in the trees. One redtail hunted low over an overgrown field they passed, the land fallow, thick with cockleburs. It floated along, turning, rising, passing again, wings flapping for a thermal.

  “I’m glad they protected them hawks,” John said.

  “I sure like to watch em.”

  The sun waned and drew down between the clouds and put the land in a soft light, cooled the air. The hair riffled on their forearms where they held their elbows on the doors. They saw dead snakes here and there. Flattened rabbits and marsupials, awkward buzzards lifting from carcasses on long and laboring wings.

  “You ever hear that thing about a possum having a forked dick?” said Joe.

  “A possum breeds through his nose.”

  “I’ve heard if you put a split in one’s tail and stick a stick through it and put him in the river, he’ll just go around in circles till he sinks.”

  They stopped on the Lynch Creek bridge to take a leak and stood there drinking their beers while they pissed. John Coleman had a dick like a horse.

  “Are y’all through working, Joe?”

  “Yessir. We’re finished for this year, I reckon. I could have made a lot more money if it hadn’t rained so much.”

  They got back in and the black car was there suddenly, lights revolving, the door opening almost before it came to a stop.

  “Well, I will be goddamn,” Joe said. He’d started to pull off but he slammed on the brake and put the gearshift up in park and got out. He walked to the back of the truck. The deputy was mad, his chest heaving. He strangled something out and Joe said, “What?”

  He looked back at John through the rear glass. All he saw was the back of his head.

  “You been riding around drinking ever since I saw you?” the deputy said.

  He saw then what was going on, loss of pride, the simple stupidity of youth, the weight of the badge. But he still wouldn’t let anybody mess with him, he didn’t care who. And he was drinking.

  The deputy held out a little contraption made of plastic and metal.

  “You want to breathe in this?”

  “Naw, I don’t want to breathe in that.”

  He turned around and got back in his truck and asked John Coleman if he was ready for another beer. The deputy walked up beside the truck and held out the little thing. He had one hand on his gun.

  “Are you gonna breathe in this or not?”

  Joe didn’t answer him. He pulled it into gear and mashed on the gas, being careful not to sling any gravel. The deputy stood in the road behind him growing smaller.

  “I bet I pissed him off that time,” he said.

  John didn’t answer. He was tracking the cruiser behind them in the fingerprinted mirror. The siren came on. Joe kept driving. They met several cars that nearly pulled over to the shoulders of the road but then went on past, the necks of the drivers craning to see. The car swung out behind him and came alongside. The deputy was motioning toward the ditch with his finger. He kept driving.

  “What’s the deal?” John said.

  The car sped up and turned crossways in the road ahead of him, and Joe came to a stop this side of it. There wasn’t any place to turn around. He put it up in reverse and hit the gas when he saw the deputy come out with his hand on his gun. He leaned out the window looking backwards and got it up to about forty, the rear end’s high-speeded whining reminding him he’d never make it. John Coleman sat sipping his whiskey and his beer. After a little bit he said, “I think he’s gonna catch us.”

  Joe slammed on the brakes and the cruiser shot past, slewed sideways in the road with the tires barking. He started to take off again, keep him going like a runner between bases for a while, then said no.

  He got out. He put his hands on the hood. The deputy walked up.

  “I ain’t done a goddamn thing,” Joe said. “I ain’t drunk. You better look for somebody else to mess with cause I ain’t done nothing. You keep messing around with me and I’m gonna hurt you.”

  “Turn around,” the deputy said. “Put your hands behind your back.”

  “You been watching too many goddamn TV shows, son.”

  The deputy came close with the cuffs in his hand.

  Joe caught him by the neck and pushed him against the hood of the truck and got the pistol away from him without a shot being fired. All the while the boy’s eyes watched him with a deep and maddened rage. Joe tossed the gun underhanded, lightly, saw it land in a clump of sagegrass on the other side of the ditch.

  “I guess if I drive off now you’re gonna get a shotgun out of the back and shoot my ass, ain’t you?” he told him.

  The deputy wouldn’t say. They drove off and left him and he didn’t follow them any more. Joe could see him in the rearview mirror, looking for the gun.

  *

  Later that night an unmarked Ford, a new dark blue one, was sitting beside his driveway, idling, when he pulled up. The sheriff himself. He stopped in the road for a moment and looked at the car and all it represented. Then he turned and pulled into his yard and killed the motor and got out and put the keys in his pocket. He was only a little drunk.

  The sheriff had the window down and he was listening to country music on the radio. He turned the volume down and shook his head when Joe walked up beside his car.

  “Get out and come on in, Earl,” he said.

  The sheriff picked up the microphone and spoke into it for a few moments and then he shut the car off. He opened the door and got out.

  “You still got that badass dog?”

  “Yeah, he’s around here somewhere. Hold on a minute.”

  He walked across the yard and the dog came out from under the house. He caught him by the collar and pulled him over to the corner of the foundation and hooked him to a chain. Then they went in.

  “I’d offer you a drink if I thought you’d take one,” Joe said.

  “I’ll drink a Coke if you’ve got one.”

  “I’ve got one.” He took it out of the icebox and handed it to him. “Have a seat. I’m gonna fix me a drink.”

  The sheriff settled himself on the couch and crossed his legs.

  ?
??How’s your kids doing, Joe?”

  “They all right, I guess.”

  “I heard you had a new grandbaby.”

  “Yeah. A boy. They didn’t name him after me.”

  He finished mixing his drink and took it over to the table and pulled out a chair and sat down, lit a cigarette.

  “All your kids about grown now, too, ain’t they?”

  “Yeah. One in college. The other one starts this fall. I reckon Johnny’s thinking about getting married. I wish he’d wait. Get his degree.”

  “What’s he going into, law enforcement?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You got a new man working for you now, don’t you?”

  “Yeah I do,” the sheriff said, and shook his head. He took a sip of his drink and waited a little, scratched the back of his hand. “I talked to the judge about you for a while the other day. He came to see me.”

  Joe picked up his drink and sloshed the ice around in the glass and took a good drink of it. “That fat sumbitch. What’d he ’low?”

  “Well, I’ll tell you. He ’lowed he was about tired of looking at you standing in front of him.”

  “Probation?”

  “Aw naw. Hell naw. I had a little talk with my new man a while ago, too. I’m gonna let him shuffle some papers for a while. He was pretty hot. I asked him a few questions and pretty much figured everything out. He’s a little gung ho, is all. A little overeager.”

  “Yeah, a little,” Joe said.

  “But he ain’t what I’m worried about. Me and you been knowing each other a long time. I know how you are. He don’t. He just made a mistake.”

  “He was just out looking for somebody to fuck with.” The sheriff looked at him for a few long slow seconds, and reached for cigarettes that were no longer in his pocket.

  “Let me just ask you a question, Joe. Do you really want to go back to the goddamn penitentiary?”

  He thought about it, shook his head. But he didn’t answer.

  “You can’t go in people’s houses and kill their dogs. It don’t matter what else is going on. You can’t fistfight with the Highway Patrol. Judge Foster won’t put up with it. He don’t have to put up with it. It’s why they build prisons. He’s wanting to give you three years with no parole for assault on a police officer. And I don’t know if I can talk him out of it. He was mad as hell. And maybe I don’t even need to talk him out of it.”

  The silence ticked by. They looked at each other in the little room and neither spoke for a while. The sheriff got off the couch and walked to the table and shook a cigarette out of the pack lying there and lit it.

  “Now you done got me back smoking,” he said. “Damn it. I been quit three weeks.”

  “I quit trying to quit. They’s two cartons on top of the icebox if you want a pack.”

  The sheriff muttered something and walked over there and got a pack.

  “There’s some matches in the drawer.”

  The sheriff opened the drawer and got a box of them.

  He pulled out a chair and sat down at the table beside him. Joe thought he looked old and tired. His hair was thinning, turning gray.

  “How long you figure you and Willie Russell can keep shooting at one another before one of you winds up dead?”

  Joe chuckled and picked up his drink.

  “That bastard,” he said. “Somebody ought to do the world a favor.”

  “I’m trying to do you one. You were thirty-five when you went to the pen the first time. What are you now, forty-two?”

  “Forty-three. Fixing to be forty-four.”

  “You getting old, Joe. I ain’t never mistreated you, have I? Tell the truth.”

  “Naw, you ain’t, Earl. You’ve stuck up for me when you could.”

  “I used to be as wild as you.”

  “At one time you were worse.”

  “I can’t tell you how to live. I ain’t trying to. Charlotte never could do anything with you, it ain’t no use in me trying. I’ve talked to her, too.”

  “I don’t need you talking to her for me.”

  “She called me. I’m the sheriff. I had to go see her. She pays taxes in this county just like everybody else. She’s got a right to talk to me. It ain’t never too late till you’re dead.”

  He didn’t move, just looked at the cigarette smoking between his fingers, the brown nicotine stains.

  “I been around for a while. I ain’t dead yet.”

  The sheriff got up and clapped him softly on the shoulder, a reassuring pat between former friends.

  “I’ll see you, Joe. I hope you’ll think about what I said.”

  Joe sat there while the lawman went out, while he went down the steps and started across the yard.

  “Come back any time,” he called out through the screen door, but the only answer was the car cranking and a brief squeal from a rear tire, the sound of the car rocketing down the road until it faded from hearing. The dog whined and he went out and unsnapped him from the chain.

  There was no traffic on the road. The night lay hot and humid around him, and he considered going to town. Connie was gone, her clothes taken, only a broken comb left behind with a scribbled note he didn’t bother to read. It was easier without her. He didn’t have to listen to anything. But she’d made the bed feel better.

  He went inside and changed his shirt and left again. The truck had plenty of gas left in it but he didn’t want to go to town.

  He backed out into the road and headed west, toward Paris and the Crocker Woods and the Big W, where there were dirt roads and big deer green-eyed in the night and no lawmen patrolling the old blacktopped roads. He got a beer from the cooler and opened it and rolled the window down and stuck his arm out. There was good music on the radio. The dark trees enveloped the road in a canopy of lush growth, and the headlights cut a bright swath through the night, exposing wandering possums, frozen rabbits, huge brown owls swooping low across the ditches.

  He drove down from the hills and leveled out in the bottom where the young crops stood dark in their ordered rows and the smells of the night came fresh and welcome on the warm air.

  He thought of the time the three blacks had hemmed him up and how someone had let them do it because his attitude was not good. Two of them were in for murder, but that didn’t scare him and he didn’t particularly respect that. Killings were different in that some were matters of honor and others simple acts of meanness committed during robberies against helpless victims and he didn’t respect that. They came at him all at once and he broke one of the men’s head against the side of a bunk and left the other two bleeding on the floor and kicked them a little as he talked to them and explained things and then fell on in line with the others in time for supper. That was the last time anybody messed with him. He’d done the rest of his time without incident.

  It would be different now. He probably wouldn’t know anybody in there, didn’t want to know anybody in there. He hadn’t made friends in there. He’d kept to himself and neither loaned nor borrowed. He didn’t box. He read, slept, worked out with weights. He looked down now at the round ball of his stomach stretching the bottom of his shirt tight. But he couldn’t argue with the man if he wanted to give him three years. And David Carson might not be so lucky this time. There was the matter of the dead Doberman. They’d have Duncan in court to testify, maybe. Duncan might listen to reason for enough money, or the right threat, or both. He smiled to himself, thinking of the look on the boy’s face that night with the girl.

  The figure struggling up out of the tunnels of night was overalled and walking like a person about to fall, his arms waving with some vague cadence and his legs slowly moving him along, the boy’s daddy. Joe slowed and involuntarily moved the truck over when he turned and looked at what was coming toward him, as the old man cocked first a thumb and then moved toward the vehicle in an incoming rush with his arms out so that Joe had to wrench the wheel violently to keep from hitting him. He swept past him and slowed down even more, the figure in the br
akelights’ red glare receding behind him in the rearview mirror.

  He drove very slowly and thought about walking home drunk in the dark for no telling how long and he wondered how it would be to be in that place.

  He went another mile and then pulled into a driveway and turned around and went back up the road. The old man was about where he thought he’d be, plodding along with his head down and his arms swinging. He pulled across the road and slowed more and then stopped in front of him, the window down, his arm hanging out. The old man came closer, his steps heavy in the roadside grass, the crickets talking, a dead snake flattened in the road there in front of him. He walked beside the pickup window and never turned his head or gave any indication of anything and kept on walking and walked on past and Joe turned his head to see him growing darker as he stepped beyond the glare of the taillights. He knew he should let it go at that.